REST

How to test whether your API can handle anomalous HTTP responses.

Today I was exploratory testing my Service, which performs sequential HTTP requests that depend on the response of the previous request. I wanted to find out how our API would handle a variety of HTTP responses. I also wanted to see what would happen if things went wrong. What if the response contains an image? Or an error code? Or what if there was a timeout?

To answer these questions as quickly and easily as possible I ventured on to the web. With some effort, I found what I was looking for, and on the way I discovered a few tools that are just great for exploratory testing your API’s response handling. If you test or debug API’s on a regular basis, here are a few free tools you’ll definitely want to check out.